I have begun reading David Harvey's "Justice, Nature & The Geography of
Difference" in earnest, since I have been invited to submit an article to
one of those high-toned academic journals I am always railing against. The
submission will critique Harvey's analysis of American Indians as being no
more intrinsically ecological than the bourgeois society that conquered
them. His proof? That they hunted the saber-tooth tiger into extinction.
Good grief!
There is an interesting subtext that has to do with David Harvey as an
existential type. He is representative of what my friend Mark Jones
referred to in the following sentence: "We are not part of the bourgeois
academy, we are not frightened, atomised intellectuals in anomic campuses
struggling for tenure, or any kind of work." Of course, nobody could
possibly describe the impeccably credentialed David Harvey as "frightened"
or "struggling." I sent Mark a copy of Harvey's book for his perusal and,
after taking a look on the back cover of the book at all the awards Harvey
had amassed, he described Harvey as owning more blue-ribbons than Heineken
beer.
What does interest me is the question of feeling "atomised" and being
adrift in "anomic campuses." I have had enough conversations with my
academic leftist friends both on and off the Columbia campus to realize
that this is a painfully true description of the situation.
There are two passages in Harvey's book that address this existential
angst. In the Introduction, he recounts his feeling of disaffection at a
Duke conference on globalization in November, 1994 that was dominated by
postmodernists. What was memorable for him was that he accidentally found
himself in a hotel in Durham that was housing conventioneers from the
Southeastern Regional Meeting of Evangelical Pentecostal Preachers. He was
struck by the "incredible enthusiasm, joy and vigor" of the Pentecostal
meeting he decided to attend out of curiosity. This was in vivid contrast
to the "heard-it-all-before incredulity and resentful passivity of the
campus audience."
In the Prologue to Part II "The Nature of Environment," he recounts his
disaffection from another group of middle-class whites, namely the
celebrants of Earth Day in 1970. He had attended a campus rally in
Baltimore of "middle class white radicals" who attacked environmental
despoliation. Later that day Harvey dropped in at the Left Bank Jazz Club,
a "popular spot frequented by African-American families in Baltimore."
There the complaint was not about polluted air and water, but lack of jobs,
poor housing and race discrimination. What sent the whole place into
"paroxysms of cheering" was one person's statement that Richard Nixon was
their main environmental problem. The working-class blacks and the
Pentecostals are more existentially authentic, as opposed to the Duke
postmodernists or the Baltimore green activists. Harvey's angst reminds me
of Jack Kerouac's vivid passage in On The Road as he walks through a black
ghetto and envies the feeling of community that a rootless intellectual
like himself could never experience. If only he could be a Negro, then he
could be a real human being.
Harvey made an appearance at the Brecht Forum in NYC a few months ago. It
was the third or fourth time I had heard him. On this occasion he led a
day-long seminar on the Communist Manifesto. The seminar was just awful,
since it lacked direction. Harvey sat impassively at the head of the table
and allowed the discussion to go off on tangents. He didn't seem happy to
be there. I now understand why he was unhappy. He was around people just
like himself, and that is a source of great unhappiness. Later in the day,
I asked the organizers why Harvey seemed so depressed. They told me that,
to the contrary, he showed more energy than enthusiasm than usual. On
reflection, I decided that they were correct. In the past, Harvey had
lectured to an audience so his anomie was not so prominently displayed. In
a small group setting like the CM seminar, he seemed virtually lifeless.
To one extent or another, his problem is faced by all Marxist-leaning
academics. They are separated from their natural social base and have to
gear their message to their professional colleagues, such as the Duke
conference organizers. For someone like Harvey who genuinely seeks to
connect with an authentic social base of oppressed and self-aware people,
the frustration must run very deep. Perhaps one of the reasons he has
decided to make ideological warfare on mainstream greens is that they
epitomize the sort of middle-class smugness that exists in academia, but
don't present any sort of threat to his professional interests. It is one
thing to unload against the Sierra Club, it is another to go up against the
Duke crowd. You might not get invited to give a plenary speech at the next
bash.
Fortunately there is relief form this sort of existential angst. You can
give classes on the labor movement to trade unionists like Michael Yates
does. Or you can be the faculty adviser to American Indian undergraduates
who organize anti-racist protests, like Jim Craven. To take this route
involves a willingness to step outside the ivory tower. Not only does it
help to change society, it is a good cure for weltschmertz.
Louis Proyect
